Sextus Empiricus: Ethics 395
consistency of his actions, is to trumpet human nature and to brag more
than to tell the truth for^48
The mind of earth-born men is such
as is the day brought forth by the father of men and gods
- The remaining possibility is that the craft of living is grasped from
those of its products that they write about in books. I shall set forth a
few of these as examples of the rest which are many and much alike.
Zeno, for example, the head of their school, in his writings concerning
the rearing of children, along with many other similar statements, says,
"It makes no difference whether you spread the thighs of a beloved youth
or one who is unbeloved, a woman or a man, for between beloved youth
and unbeloved, women and men, there is no difference, but it befits and
is fitting to do the same thing to either." 246. The same man says,
regarding piety towards parents, in the case of Jocasta and Oedipus, that
it was not a bad thing for him to have sex with his mother. "If she had
been ailing in some other part of her body and he benefitted her by
rubbing it with his hands, there would be nothing shameful. So, if he
gave her joy by rubbing other parts of her body, and relieved her sorrow,
and fathered noble children by her, was that shameful?" Chrysippus
agrees with these words. Indeed, in his Republic he says, "It seems to me
that we should act as many are nowadays accustomed to act blamelessly, so
that a mother bears her son's children, a daughter her father's, and a
sister her brother's." 247. In the same works he introduces us to cannibal-
ism. Indeed, he says, "if some part of a living thing is cut off and found
to be useful for eating, we should neither bury it nor otherwise dispose
of it, but consume it, so that another part might grow from ours." 248.
In his On Appropriate Actions he says literally, regarding the burial of one's
parents, "When parents die, the simplest burials should be employed, as
if the body were nothing to us, like the nails or teeth or hair, the sort
of thing which to we give no care or attention. Therefore, should pieces
of flesh be useful for eating, men will make use of them, and so too for
their own parts, for example, a foot which is severed; it was right to use
it and things like it. Should the parts be useless, they should bury or
leave them or burn them and let the ashes lie, or throw them away and
make no further use of them, like nails or hair." 249. The philosophers
say these and many similar things which they would not dare to carry
out unless they were ruled by a Cyclopes or Laestrygones.^49 But if their
- Homer Odyssey 18.136-137.
- Uncivilized peoples mentioned in the Odyssey.
